


Bird Without A Song

by tb_ll57



Series: In The Quiet Heart Is Hidden [3]
Category: The Song of the Lioness - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Background Relationships, Background Slash, Canon Compliant, F/M, Gap Filler, M/M, Slight canon deviation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-14
Updated: 2015-02-14
Packaged: 2018-03-11 14:01:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3328979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Roger's revenge was, had to be, petty; the slight that occasioned it was small enough, and for the moment Thom far too public to be easily done away with.  Roger would strike at Alanna by moving some silly chit between the Prince and his squire, and thereby strike at Thom, who would be reminded it was Roger's playing field, Roger's pawns arrayed all around.  Stalemate.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bird Without A Song

**Author's Note:**

> ‘Twas there while the black bird was cheerfully singing  
> I first met that dear one the joy of my heart  
> Around us for gladness the blue bells were ringing  
> But then little thought I how soon we should part.
> 
> ~The Ash Grove, Welsh folksong

Quiet nights were for mending and that was where he found her.  The Prince had opened the door for him, taken one look at a man he'd never met before and grinned widely enough to display all his fine white teeth.  'Not a word,' Jonathan whispered, a finger at his lips, and led Thom to the adjoining door himself.  With great care it came ajar noiselessly, and the Prince kindly let him through without accompanying him.  Thom put his back to the door.  It was almost painfully sweet, to see her there.  Her armour hung from a cross-pole in the corner, surcoat with the palace seal proud on the chest.  Her sword sat beside her on her low cot, and it was the leather belt she darned in her lap.  Her long hair dragged at her sleeve as she bent over it, her candle drawn near enough to set ribbons of gold ablaze amidst the fiery red.  Her hands were capable and strong, the blunt bones of her knuckles and her wrist as rough as any boy's, but when she lifted that wrist to brush at her cheek, the simple movement was so elegant he wondered no-one had ever guessed.

'Alanna,' he said softly.

Her head shot up.  A moment later she was on her feet, her belt and needle tumbling to the floor, and then she was in his arms.  For all he was taller she nearly squeezed the life out of him, and he hid his tears in her shoulder, laughing in delight.  When they could bear to let go she took him by the cheeks, turned him this way and that, stroking his beard.  She kissed the corner of his brow, the way she'd always done when they were children.

'Goddess, you're beautiful,' she said.

'Men don't get to be beautiful,' he chided, and pressed her knuckles to his lips.  'You are, though.  Tell me your Prince hasn't taken advantage?'  Her sudden and rosy blush was answer enough, if Thom hadn't already begun to think it from the Prince's ease in sneaking into her cell.  'Well,' Thom said, tartly.  'I'll like being important when you're Queen.'

'Don't start,' she told him severely, so red she nearly matched her hair.  'Not yet.  I want time to remember how happy I am to see you before you start being you.'

He couldn't help but laugh.  He embraced her fiercely.  'Show me everything.  And I want to see you fence.  And I'm half starved.  And we should talk.  Oh-- and I've brought you gifts.'

'Gifts?  Whyever?'

'Because I'm the eldest and it is my lordly pleasure to bestow treasures on my most worthy younger brother,' he said loftily.  'But that very officious steward took my bags somewhere and I've not been told yet.  I've a letter from Coram for you as well, and I'm sworn to promise he'll be here in time to take off adventuring with us.'  He kissed her again because he couldn't not.  'Where are we going first?'

'First to find your room,' she said, quite practically, 'and then... well, everything.'

'Everything,' he agreed.

 

 

His presentation at Court was not unremarkable, as such things went, though he didn't know it at the time.  Trebond was strategically placed and home to a long-established line, but they were not wealthy, they were not well-known, and Trebond were minor nobles, so his presentation came after a small crowd of young women in white making their debut, the Tusaine ambassador presenting his son who was visiting to learn the trade, and a representative of the Corus Aldermen requesting the King's review of documents regarding something or other; it was hard to pay attention.  Compared to Trebond, where Thom had never met a stranger in his entire childhood, the City of the Gods had been populous, but Corus was easily thrice again its size and it seemed that half the capital was crammed into the throne room.  Men and women alike wore blazing silks with fur, embroidery, jewellery glittering all over.  Men favoured soft velvet caps with oversized plummage of birds he could hardly believe were real.  Women piled their hair atop their heads in towers and wrapped themselves in lacy veils.  Ankles were in, this season, and everywhere he looked ladies in bulging skirts displayed delicate slippers with heels of ivory, clicking clicking clicking across the stone floor.

'Pay attention,' Alanna hissed.

Thom focussed.  'What do I say to him?'

'You call him Majesty and you tell him your name and then you leave.'

'Excellent.  What about the gifts?'

'The steward will put them where they belong.  Don't bring it up.'

'I did pay rather a lot for the book.  I'd sort of like for his Majesty to know that.'

'Definitely don't bring it up.'  They shuffled closer in the vague and winding queue toward the throne as the burghers finished their business.  'Don't forget to bow.  You practised your bow?  Your posture is wretched.'

'I won't embarrass you, brother.'  He poked at the spot just above her kidney that always made her jerk and curl ticklishly.  She did, but she was scowling fiercely, and he bit his lips together to stop his grin.

An old man with a booming voice announced him, and Alanna hung back as Thom advanced to the edge of a gold carpet that surrounded the dais.  He bowed.  He might have wobbled a little.  Alanna probably had a point about his posture.  'Your Majesty,' he said, and hesitated when he realised Alanna had never told him how to address the Queen.  He bowed again.  'Your, um.  Majesty.'

The Prince appeared from the left, joining Thom into the void that stretched after the King inclined his head.  'A great honour,' the Prince said, taking his hand and then dropping a possessive palm to his shoulder.  'Trebond is blessed indeed,' he said.  'We are long acquainted with your brother's talents, but a Master of the Mithran Light at your age?  I am astonished.'

Conversation around them abruptly died.  The King sat forward on his throne.  'You do not wear the robes,' the King said, or accused, Thom couldn't read the tone.

'I haven't figured out where they've put my baggage,' he said.

Someone tittered.  Even the Queen smiled.  'I think we can help with that,' the Prince said gravely.  'Things do get rather confused during the Season.  But I would like to introduce you-- ah, Roger.  Duke Roger of Conte, I have the pleasure of introducing Thom of Trebond.'

Just when he'd begun to think Prince Jonathan possessed of vast social skills.  Duke Roger of Conte could hardly be pleased to be publicly coerced into an exchange with a younger and possibly more powerful mage, and his cousin was surely taking a jab at his pride in forcing it before the entire Court and their Majesties.  Thom, however, found himself presented with a bow even he was wise enough to see was too low for a man greeting his social inferior, and after that came a smooth grip to his hand, a grip that lingered.

Oh, Thom thought dimly.  So that was the famous charm.

'No doubt of your lineage,' Roger murmured.  'We shall have to get you into those robes indeed.  Otherwise we should have no way of telling you apart from your twin.  Squire Alan has done you proud, these many years.'

'Only a fool would stand between Alan and his goals,' Thom replied brightly.  Roger's grip on his hand tightened ever so slightly, ever so briefly.

Prince Jonathan laughed.  'Yes, I think we've all learnt that.  And you must be ambitious yourself.  A Master at eighteen.'

'Seventeen,' Roger corrected his cousin.  'Or am I mistaken that you've not yet reached your majority?'

'I've always been in something of a hurry.'

'I should like to offer a tour of my workroom,' Roger said then, angling to include the King and Queen, who watched curiously.  Roger raised his voice.  'With another Court Sorcerer, Uncle, I might at last succeed in imploring you to let me resume my travels...'

King Roald smiled.  Thom did not find it especially fond, which was interesting in itself.  'You are always so eager to be gone from us, Roger.'

'And I'm afraid I can't offer you an out,' Thom interjected.  'My brother and I have previous plans.'

'Ah, yes, adventuring.'  This from the Queen, who favoured them with a soft look.  Thom glanced back for Alanna's downcast blush.  'Our Court must be unfriendly indeed, if all our heroes would fly from us.'

'Well, the tour invitation stands,' Roger amended.  He smoothed his moustaches, gazing down at Thom with rich blue eyes that promised secrets would be spoken.  Lies, Thom thought, intrigued.  But how attractive the lies were.

'I look forward to it,' he said, and bowed again toward the thrones, and made way for the Baron of New Haven.  The Prince was drawn away to speak to Gareth the Elder, and Roger lingered not at all, drawn away by one of the squires.  Alanna was back at his side as soon as permissible, digging her fingernails into his arms.

'Thom, you absolutely must be impossible,' she sighed.  'Honestly, with a scene like that you'll be palace legend by afternoon.  Lost your bags!'

'Well I have,' he protested, but Alanna laughed, and he grinned, and all was forgiven.

'There's Gary and Raoul,' Alanna said then.  'I'll make introductions.  You're not really going to Roger's suite?'

'I can't think of a single reason I wouldn't.'

'He wants you dead?'

'Well,' he said, 'one reason, then.'

 

 

Roger's weight across his thighs kept him from bucking.  Lips dragged across his collarbone, warm beard bristles tickling his bare skin.  Fingers callused from swordplay made mystical patterns on Thom's cock, stroking delicately.  Thom wound his fingers through Roger's thick silky chest hair, making a slow fist in it.  Roger hissed, and bit his ear lobe.  Thom buried a moan in the soft linen sheet.  Then it was in earnest, Roger's palm flying slick on him, and with a final gasp Thom gave it up.  His release spattered Roger's wrist.

'Off,' Thom said, following that with a shove.  Roger blinked in surprise, but he went, and Thom slid out from beneath him.  He tugged up his hose as he stood and fastened them, and shook the wrinkles from his crumpled shirt.  As he dressed, he helped himself to the wine that had gone untouched during the excitement earlier.

Roger began to laugh.  'I see,' he said then, and settled against the tall pillar of the bed's wooden canopy, dragging the warm furs over his lap.  'The City of the Gods is still a den of boy-lovers, obviously.'

'Would you prefer a blushing virgin?'  Thom sipped appreciatively, and tied a knot in his laces.  Books.  He'd spied them earlier, and carried the wine with him as he went to browse.  Expensive collection.  Worth a king's ransom.  Bound with leather, folios sewn with gold thread into the binding.  Hand-painted gilt and quite legible printing in fine black ink.

'You're not what I expected.'

'You expected Alan.'

'I fear I have never entirely expected Alan.'

'Well you should fear it.  He suspects you.'

Roger looked both surprised and titilated by that burst of candour, when Thom glanced back.  'Perhaps not so unalike after all.  Your twin has a way of attacking with honesty, as well.'

'There's honesty and there's truth.'  Thom removed a volume bound in blue.  'If I take this, what will you do?'

'Allow it.'  Roger brushed a tangle from his hair.  His hand slid slowly beneath the fur; Thom watched its progress.  'Perhaps when you find these mystery rooms of yours, I can come retrieve it.'

Thom turned with the book held to his chest.  'Did you seduce my brother?'

'I wondered,' Roger said.  The lump beneath the furs moved, languid.  'When he's near, his eyes flutter closed.  You did the same.  Such long lashes.'

'Perhaps I'll bring him tomorrow night.  Both of us in your bed.  Your hands on me, his hands on you.'

The movement of that little lump began to speed.  Up and down.  'I want your mouth next time.'

'I bite,' Thom said.  He set the book on the bed and crawled the mattress, straddling Roger's legs.  Roger looped him near with a long arm, pressed his hot face to Thom's belly, mouthing at his shirt.  Thom gathered handfuls of his hair.  'You might like me to bite.  You might like me to--' he bent low, lips against Roger's cheek.  'Here,' he whispered, circling Roger's small pink nipple with his thumb.  'Here.'  Lower, his navel, which sucked in tight at Thom's exploring touch.  'Alan won't bite you.  Alan will wait til you're mindless with pleasure, and then his knife will slice right-- here--'

Roger groaned.  Thom left the bed again, with Roger limp and panting behind him, and threw open the heavy curtains.  Moonlight flooded the bedroom.  Roger had very fine rooms indeed, overlooking not the East Garden but the Great Forest, and here it was easy to imagine there was no bustling city, no chattering Court, nothing but the moon high overhead and escape awaiting below.  Thom unlatched the fine glass window and swung it open for the cool midwinter air.  'In Trebond we're under four feet of snow right now,' he said.

'Since you declined to murder me mid-coitus, I doubt you'll do it discussing the weather.'

'I won't murder you.'  Thom clasped his hands over the sill.  Iron met wood met stone with crumbles and gaps.  He picked at them.  'You do die,' he said absently.

There was a long silence, then.  No sound at all but what Thom made, scratching at the window.  'You have the Sight,' Roger said suddenly, too quietly.

'Yes.'

'You've seen my death.'

'You've desperately sought out every hedgewitch and garden herbalist trying to predict your future.  You already know you come to an early end.'

'I've never had it confirmed.'  Roger rose, nude and magnificent.  He caged Thom against the window, muscled arms coming tight to either side.  His hips canted tight to Thom's.  'Shall I believe you, little liar?  You absolutely reek of jealousy.  You'd say anything to get your greedy hands on my wealth, my books.  I could buy you for the price of a Low Market crystal.'

'Did you kill everyone else who gave you the prediction?  You can only stop the voices speaking the future, not the future itself.'

Fingers curled about his throat.  'I could destroy you.'

'Could you?  You could try.'

Amethyst sparked against orange.  Testing, oh, just the very edges.  Roger backed down first.

Thom took the book.  'The Prince has offered me an audience tomorrow night anyway,' he said.  'Too bad.  But I think I've seen all your best tricks already.'

 

 

'Delia of Eldorne,' Alanna muttered.  She passed Thom a goblet of the cider he'd favoured at dinner the night before, aged in old brandy barrels.  Thom saw white on her knuckles where she gripped her serving tray, and tugged her aside behind a hanging tapestry.

'Switch,' he said, and took the tray while she took the drink, knocking back a good swallow.  'You've gone red.'

'I thought she'd sunk her hooks elsewhere, that's all.  I can't linger, I'm supposed to be--'

'Breathe first.'  He tapped the edge of the goblet, and she drank again.  'You really are with the Prince.'

'Thom!'  Her alarm lasted only til she was sure he really hadn't exposed her; they were quite alone, and he'd whispered besides.  'Delia doesn't know that,' Alanna said grudgingly.  'She's toyed with him for years.'

'Then let her try and fail.  I don't think I've heard a single sentence from the Prince that doesn't wind back to you.'  He began to grin.  'This is, you know, the most lady-like I've ever seen you.  You'd claw her eyes out if you could.'  He enjoyed her gasp of outrage.  'Ignore him all night.  Trust me.'

'Since when do you know how to handle a love spat?'

For all his teasing, hearing that word from her, so casually spoken, it hurt.  He'd never not been the centre of that word, for her.  He sucked in a quick hard breath, shallow so it wouldn't sting.  'Convent girls,' he said.  'Of which Delia of Eldorne was one.  She bleaches her hair with lemon juice.  Go ignore the Prince and he'll spend the entire night trying to get your attention back, believe me.'

'I see you're just as wicked as ever.'  They traded again, Thom for his cider and Alanna for the tray.  'I'd druther put a frog in his bed,' she said, with a glint of that old sly prankster.

'I'll keep one in reserve,' he promised.

He'd thought that was it.  Roger's revenge was, had to be, petty; the slight that occasioned it was small enough, and for the moment Thom far too public to be easily done away with.  Roger would strike at Alanna by moving some silly chit between the Prince and his squire, and thereby strike at Thom, who would be reminded it was Roger's playing field, Roger's pawns arrayed all around.  He would bring the book back to Roger's rooms, and they'd make a mess of another set of sheets, and Roger would quite probably manoeuvre him into more words on the subject most important to Roger, namely his own life and death.  Stalemate.

Thom reckoned without Alexander of Tirragen.

 

 

'They don't really allow feet on the table.'

Thom looked up.  The library had been empty for hours, and the hour-mark candle had burnt down near to dawn.  He glanced over his shoulder anyway.

He knew the slim man who sat at his table.  Alanna had pointed him out.  Sir Alexander had kinky curls, skin the colour of burnt caramel, still hands.  Thom noticed the hands.  No rings, unusual in this richly decorated court.  Like Thom, he wore black, his tunic laced to the round of his Adam's apple.  Braces of worn leather moulded to his wrists.  He wore a sword and he wore it like an extra appendage, something so comfortable in its place on his hip that he no longer thought of it.  Like magic, Thom thought, startled to think it, for he'd never noticed weapons before, even in Alanna's capable hold.

'The chair's hard,' Thom said.

'I remember.'  The knight touched the edges of the pile of scrolls Thom had accumulated.  'I'd have thought you'd chose texts on sorcery.'

'I've read most of them already.  It's pleasant to divert oneself with new challenges.'

That garnered no immediate response.  Roger's squire, Alanna had said.  She'd been cagey with details.  Broken collarbone.  She'd said it was an accident.  She'd said he might not have been himself-- but he might have been.  Sir Alexander plucked a scroll from the pile and unrolled it.

'The philosophy collection is decent.'  Another scroll.  'For a Court where might has generally made right.  They teach us the Code of Chivalry for three months.  Adequate to a lifetime wielding a sword against enemies chosen for us by the Crown.'

'Obedience is one of those code-- bits,' Thom said.  'Alan mentioned it once.'

'Talk about the Code much with your brother?'

'Only when bereft of anything actually interesting.'  Thom drummed his fingers on the table.  'Would you recommend any particular reading?'

Brown eyes flecked with gold held his.  'William of Moreham's _Commentaries_ make a good start.  Dominic spends too much time incorporating religion into truth.  If you have any interest in Rationalism, you might try Empedocles.  For Absolutism, Ala al-Din.'  A pause, not a blink.  Steady gaze.  'If you'd just like something to bore you to sleep, you've already found the Orsilochus.'

And with that, Sir Alexander rose and left.

'Odd,' Alanna said, when he told her that morning.  She'd brought him a bucket of warm water for a morning scrub and now stood behind him with snipping shears hard at work.  Thom was indifferent to his appearance as years amongst monks could make a man, but he had no desire to actually embarrass his twin, and knew his lack of culture would begin to draw attention.  He'd have done it only for the gentle smile it raised in her, the tender tug of her comb through his hair.  'Just reading assignments?'

'Good recommendations,' Thom admitted.  'Not the mainstays of scholasticism.  And the Ala al-Din is a new translation.  I think he may actually be intelligent.'

'Brat.'  She gave him a swift pinch.  'We're warriors, not scholars.'

'Well, he may be both.'  Thom fidgeted the hem of his shirt.  'We should leave,' he said then.  'The moment you get your shield.  Do you feel it?  It's going to be a bad winter.'

'As soon as Coram's here.'  A lock of ginger hair fell between his palms.  He brushed it away.  'You don't want to stay?  Til spring at least?'

'No.  Let's be ready, shall we?  The very night.  It will be... it will be our own special celebration.  Out under the stars.  Free.'

'I don't feel specially imprisoned.'  At her direction he tilted his head down, and she cut a careful line along his shoulders.  'You have a feeling, don't you?  One of your dreams?'

He faced her on his stool.  He took the shears from her and encased her hands in his own.  'You've managed not to listen every other time I've said it.  Duke Roger wants us dead.  If we stay, he'll only hound us til he has reason to act.  I understand you want your shield, I wouldn't deny that, but why stay after?'

'Jonathan,' she dismissed him.

'Loves the man who would see him in an early grave so he can take the throne.  Alanna, and it's not your job to stand between them.  No, listen to me, it's not.  It's not.'

Soberly she cupped his cheeks.  He pressed her hands there.  'I won't leave him vulnerable,' she said.  'If you've Seen something, Thom, tell me so I can stop it.'

'No-one can stop things that will be,' he whispered bitterly.

'Then stop trying to run from destiny.'  She held him, and he rested his head on her chest, let her stroke his hair.  'We'll have our adventures.  Don't worry so much.  If it were going to go badly, you'd know, wouldn't you?'

'No Seer knows everything.  I would to all the Gods I did.'

'Gods don't help near as much as we'd like,' she said, with some irony, as he touched the emberstone beneath her tunic.  'And as far as I can tell there's no good railing against it.  So get dressed.  You look proper now.  I'll get you seated at breakfast before I must be off.  Only a month til the Ordeal.  I think they keep the squires busy so we can't pester anyone going mad with anticipation.'

At breakfast, Lady Delia's sparkling laugh entertained the rafters, but the Prince was only smiling for his squire, and they disappeared together in the direction of the practise courts.  Roger, seated beside his uncle at the high table, watched them go.  Thom picked at his gammon and drank too much wine.  Sir Alexander watched him, and did not look away, as Roger did.

Two days later, a new scroll appeared at Thom's table in the library.  It was marked with a black ribbon clipped carefully into place, underlining the final commandment of the Knight's Oath.

_Never to turn your back upon a foe._

Indeed, Thom thought, and wondered if that were threat, or advice.


End file.
